Sketchbook Thread of Aviva

#1

Hello CGtalkers,

I haven’t drawn seriously for four years now and I’ve really missed it. Except for the time when, to my glee and classmates dismay, we were required to do a bit of drawing for one of our prac books. So I do have a few labelled dog scull diagrams, and animal leg bones, but most of the stuff we drew were animal innards. Now if only I had a functioning scanner
:stuck_out_tongue: Anyway, I got distracted from drawing while doing a science degree, but I never could prevent myself from doodling all over my lecture notes. I now have half a year off before I continue studying, so its time to draw like crazy while I can. This looks like the perfect place to help me get back into things, with such a great collection of resources and talented artists.

I used to mostly draw animals, and have always been ok at drawing what I see, but I always avoided drawing humans as if doing so would give me the plague. I’m over whatever that was now, and would like to learn how to draw anatomically accurate humans as well as animals. I’m mostly self-taught, and I have plenty of anatomical knowledge when it comes to understanding biology, but I’m not sure how useful knowing octopi have three hearts will be for drawing

I would love to receive honest critiques, I don’t mind if they seem harsh as they are constructive. I have a lot to learn.

Anyway, enough babbling from me. I look forward to seeing you all around the site! :slight_smile:

Cheers,

Tessa

#2

Here be my left hands. :bounce:

#3

Hi Aviva

those hand studies look very promising.
Looking forward to see more of your stuff

#4

Hi Johan - thanks for the comment! :slight_smile:

This is the stuff I’ve posted in the 15 minute sketchathon so far. I never really tried to draw to a short time limit before. It really highlights my weaknesses. I use to plug away at a drawing for ages and never really get anywhere, so I think this excercise is a good experience. This is also helping me to reaquaint with Painter.

This is what started me off with the hands yesterday.

#5

You know what we had to do last night in class?

Draw the same head several times. First 1min, then 2min30, 5min, 10min and finally 20min.
Very interesting exercise. You could try it with anything :slight_smile:

Great quick sketches.
The monkey is nice, reminds me of someone I know personally lol.

#6

Tessa,

Welcome. :slight_smile: I really hope that you can get a functioning scanner because I think that a lot of the joy of drawing happens traditionally - but I look forward to seeing you push your digital skills of course as well. What paint program are you using? If you want to use a great digital pencil tool, you might try artrage - the ‘high end’ version is $20. :slight_smile: It’s a very good sketch program.

Looking forward to more!

Cheers,

-Rebeccak

#7

Welcome Tessa, Those are really nice short sketches…I don’t see much of a weakness in them at all, give yourself more credit!
I especially like the monkey one. Is he holding an egg?

#8

Very good start. I especially like the hand studies.

#9

I just got a fright when I saw my drawings on my brother’s computer, the colours and contrast are horrid. I don’t know if its just his old screen, or if it’s because I’m working on a laptop. My old laptop had really poor contrast, but I assumed this one would be better since its fairly new. I know how to calibrate colours between programs on one computer but no idea how it works between computers. How do the colours look to you?

Johan - lol, that must be one hell of a hairy person… I think I’ll give that exersise a go. :slight_smile: Thanks for telling me about it!

Rebecca - Thank you for the welcome! I’m using painter. Will look into Artage, but until I get a job even $20US is out of my price range. lol, I somehow ended up completely broke in weeks that followed Christmas. Working on the job thing though. Also trying to work out if I know anyone with a scanner I can use. What really sucks is the local library had one, but it’s been shut down because the shopping centre it’s located at is undergoing major (2 years worth of) renovations.

Hi Roja - The monkey’s holding a snowball. :slight_smile:

Asatira - Thanks!

I started this one with the intention of it being a 15 minute sketch but I couldn’t seem to stop. It ended up taking several hours, lost track of exactly how many.

Edit: I should really learn to use the preview function. I always see errors after I post!

#10

So many new faces in the forum these days. Great to see.
Haha, it’s always like that, you post something and then notice your mistakes. Hapenned to me and others more than once :slight_smile:
Welcome, and keep up with the studies!

#11

Thanks for the welcome Razz! :slight_smile:

Some quick hummingbird sketches.

#12

#13

Started off for the 15 minute sketchathon…

…then continued for another few hours.

:slight_smile:

#14

Some frog studies and brush experiments done in Painter using various references from GettyImages, Corbis, and National Geographic. If anyone would like to see a particular reference image, let me know.

#15

Awesome frogs! The shading is quite nice too on the human studies too. The muscles aren’t quite there on the second human study.

#16

Beautiful work, love these frogs! I also really like the grayscale figure you did. Keep up the good work. :slight_smile:

#17

Last week my laptop decided it wasn’t going to turn on at all (finally got round to fixing it) so I don’t have much digital stuff to show. Been doing some pencil drawings and my brother agreed to see if he could fix our old scanner, so fingers crossed!

Thanks Womball! Ok, must work more on muscles. I knew it didn’t look right, but all my non-artistic friends and family insisted it was perfect, as they always do. Thats where places like this come in handy. :slight_smile:

Thanks Rebecca! :slight_smile:

Some more from the sketchathon:

#18

I like the progression between the 15min sketch and the longer drawing/painting. Very good work on the eagle. Keep going, and I’d love to see some traditional practices too. It’s always fun to work in different media.

#19

Hi…Aviva…:slight_smile:
Enjoyed going through your thread…nice rendering skills on those frogs…:thumbsup: …would really like to see you render those humming birds…my favorite bird…little living jewels…:slight_smile:
I also like the figure in frame #9…nice job there…:applause: :thumbsup:
If you are interested in taking your figure studies further, you might check out some of Burne Hogarth’s books…Dynamic Anatomy, and Dynamic Figure Drawing, are two that will really help you out in your studies to start with…:slight_smile:
REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOUR WORKS AND PROGRESS.:thumbsup:
TAKE CARE
Glenn

#20

Asatira - Thank you! :slight_smile: Working on trying to show some traditional stuff. My brother managed to get our old scanner working on his puter, I got excited and he said I could use it the next day when he wasn’t home. The next day his puter’s main hardrive crashed. The scanner wont connect to my laptop because its requires a serial port connection, which my laptop doesnt have. Just can’t win at the moment!
I tried out prismacoloured (I mean prismacolOred! :P) pencils for the first time today :love: Drew a Ulysses butterfly, and then I think I had a little too much fun with the blender. Can anyone tell me what the best way of sharpening them is? I afraid a few of mine came with already broken leads :frowning:

Hi Glenn, hummingbirds are adorable little things, never realised just how colourful they could be 'till I saw an article on them in National Geographic the other month. Just had to sketch some after seeing that. I think I will have a go at rendering some. :slight_smile:

I was looking at Burne Hogarth’s “Drawing Dynamic Hands” a few days ago in our local bookshop. I was looking at all the anatomy/figure drawing books, there were so many I had no idea what to choose, they don’t have his other ones at the moment so I’ll see if I can track them down. Thank you very much for the recomendation!